


Blackbeasts

by marsmarzipan



Category: Original Work
Genre: Aliens, Aliens Made Them Do It, Fae & Fairies, Imperialism, Lovecraftian, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:20:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28208202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marsmarzipan/pseuds/marsmarzipan
Summary: This is a standalone, original work, that I've been working on since the middle of last year. This is just the prologue. Contact me if you want the rest, but I don't want it to be posted publicly until I can publish it for real.In the early 1600s, Fabian Blackwood, a sudrittish engineering student, decides to join a colony ship headed West; to the New World of Verdoirêt, the "green-black forest." The crew upon the ship with him is a cast of unique, interesting characters, who all have a story waiting for them on the other side of that pond...I apologize in advance for the lack of indentation. If it's hard to read, an indented copy will be available as a google doc; contact me!(mars#4007





	Blackbeasts

June 15th, 1610  
Upon the Harrowing Sea, westward.

It was a dark morning that the Qué de Nòu set sail. The port, with an almost green sea-air, was quiet. The twelve passengers and their skipper piled in, picked their rooms, and settled their belongings for the two week trip across the Harrowing Sea. It was a quiet first day as the sail was set--with the assistance of several voyagers. Instantly, a man in a brown leather wool-inner jacket, black tights, and big, rigid boots with several straps--he stands out, because he’s wearing a flexible full-body cast under his garb. Only his eyes and his mouth are visible. He boards the ship first. Several follow him. He’s bringing aboard a few satchels, some garments, many, many journals, and several small pieces of art.  
The skipper himself was wearing what could only be described as a tank-top (it was honestly surprising that he was even wearing anything to cover his broad, sun-darkened chest,) as well as a formless upper garment tied around his waist, and pants made of a thin cotton reinforced with a dense and tight woolen inner. His boots were just as heavy and iron-clad as the other man’s, as a common thread between sailors of any hail were the boots that ironically made swimming to be a death sentence. The skipper was one of the final men, but not quite the last, to board. He carries with him nothing but his knapsack. Everything he needs is already on the boat, because it’s his own.  
A final man enters the view. He’s the last to board. He has chin-length, black hair, cut short on one side, let fall on the other. He’s wearing a white frilly undershirt, it’s puffs kept at bay with a tight black leather vest, which further accentuates his thin stomach--almost visible is his ribcage, if it weren’t for the frills in the shirt distorting the topography imposed by the vest. His pants are dressy, like the kind people wear to weddings--loose at the thighs, and wrapped tight to the calves with a gauze-like black fabric. His shoes are black, tough, and cuffed tight. He wears no boots yet. He wears a fingerless leather glove, to keep his sharp instruments from slicing at his hands--in his many knapsacks and bags he has tools for drawing, or cutting, or forming, or breaking. He enters the lower deck, where his assigned room sat. In the deck just below surface, the two longest walls were lined with six tiny rooms each. They each had nothing but a hay-and-hide bed and a desk-like platform just left of the door, as well as a small lantern (with no oil, mind you) set upon it. As it was early morning, most voyagers simply stayed in their rooms, arranging their things for the turbulent two-week trip, and napping away the seasickness. The boat left port after an hour or so.  
The water, visage of flawed sapphire--dark, teal, and shattered--crashed, and rocked the small crew boat back and forth across the sea. The creaks of the beams sent equal shivers down it’s mens’ spines. The sail whipped and reared and flew about on the single mast. This ship, one of 8 crew boats sent West, was titled “Qué de Nòu” as in ‘What is New?’ in Oxitan--the language of the people south of the country of Ritan, the self-proclaimed "great empire of the world." Ritan spanned three islands, and bit deep into the main land. Freusca, the Oxitan land to it’s south, was their greatest competitor. All others were simply, to the Rittish nobility, anyway, childish ‘empires’ not fit to wield the knowledge of the Wheel. Ritan and Freusca frequently warred, but no country borders another without adopting some of it’s culture, and thus the southern men--titled 'Sudritts,' as their culture differed from the similarly named Midritts and Norsritts--find truth in Oxitan phrases, especially those about the frequent Freuscan belief that all things change except the sadness in the hearts of men--thus, “Qué de Nòu” and “Compreni Pas,” things of the nihilistic nature, tended to name the creations of the South-Rittish man.   
The boat of just 12 men--the smallest on this trip--followed the trail of it’s seven comrades, through the whipping and lashing sea. Nothing proved the myths, thus far, anyway.  
The skipper was taking his time to know every one of his twelve men, and the skipper was a very witty man, infrequent did he find a crew-man with a deft tongue as him, they were usually stupid muscle. Sometimes, though, he met some poet or journalist trying to see the world to better sharpen their own tongue; he often liked to have deep conversations with them, though he never quite admitted his interest in their concepts--he feigned the wiser man.  
“Name?” he asked of the dressy crewman.  
“Fabian Blackwood, sir.” the harrowingly thin, pale man said. He was visibly taller than all the other men- and he wasn’t even wearing his travelling boots, simply the hard-soled shoes men used to walk about the deck without getting splinters. His travelling boots gave him an extra inch, but then so did it everyone else.  
“Fabian, then, you look quite… let me say it this way, so that I may not pierce your fair skin with my tongue… You are quite lithe, boy, who thought to send you westward?”  
“Skipper, sir-”  
“You may address me by my name, not my title. We may be on a skip of a vessel, but think not of me as your Skipper.”  
“What is your name, sir?”  
“I am Jonathan Keres. You may call to me as Keres.” he said his own first name with some discomfort, but expressed adept tendencies in his last; ‘care-is’ it was pronounced.  
“Alright, Keres. I was sent on this journey not for my constitution--or lack thereof--I was sent here for my wits.”  
“Well, describe them to me.”  
“I am an experienced mechanical worker. I design machines for watermills.”  
“They say that the forest’s rivers run deeper and coarser than any Rittish or Freuscan river there is.”  
“And, sir, you’re going to need a great engineer to abuse them.”  
“I suppose. But if all you’re up to, is drawing it on a pad of paper, what’s the need of you to come with us and eat of our produce?”  
“I’ve not an answer to that question, Keres. Speak to the commissioner, who sent me here, among you men.”  
“I am not bitter, Blackwood. I understand that any boy becomes a man under pressure, as lump-iron becomes steel in the crucible.”  
“We should only hope that the crucible does not heat, and that steel is unnecessary.”  
“Steel still does anything that iron can do, ten times better- regardless of whether steel was required or not. I believe, as you to be an engineer, you focus quite hard on efficiency, no? Then to be steel is to be irreplaceable.”  
“To be steel is to make yourself expensive. To be iron is to make yourself available to those that require you.”   
“Aye, and to be expensive is to be happy.”  
“I suppose, sir, but to be available is to be helpful.”  
“Let’s not equate those two, just yet, Blackwood. To be available is to potentially be undesirable; dirt is available, but we’re not using it for gears. To be lump-iron when one needs lump-iron is to be subservient. To be steel when all one needs is lump-iron is to be demanding of respect. Do you demand respect, boy?”  
“I believe that I do, sir.”  
“Then ask not that the crucible does not heat up!”  
“I suppose not, sir.”  
“Anyway, Blackwood, do you wish to be upon this journey, yourself? I figure that is quite what matters most.”  
“I have long been dreaming of a day where I could cradle a parish under a mill, myself.”  
“Oh, here for land? Fair, I suppose. Not much supple forest to go around back in Ritan. I’ve seen this continent, this new world, it beckons to me, sometimes, but true do I know that the sea calls louder. Verdoirêt, I’ve taken to calling it- the green-black forest.”  
“Verdoirêt? Sounds… fitting, from what I’ve heard. I come hardly prepared to defend myself, I figure, but I amass that I will not be a frontman.”  
“Surely not.”  
“Say, Keres, how long have you been skipping?”  
“Oh, boy, I have been command of Qué de Nòu since it’s craft. This old nag has been sent around the Harrowing Sea thrice a quarter since then- 15 years ago. Back then, we didn’t know of Verdoirêt, but we knew of the Sudéserte and their silk to adorn our lords, as well as the îleorger, and their thin steel blades that tear the skin like paper. I’ve seen the sakura of Quelance, and the verdant stone pyramids of Ouestribu. I’ve seen war, too. I’ve seen battles of Freusca so violent that I felt to be dropping men off to a pit of snakes. Say, you’re an engineer, have you salt in gunsmithing?”  
“I’ve not tried my hand at any sort of armory, Keres.”  
“You may’ve not tried, son, but may you understand it, is my question.”  
“I believe I may quickly adapt to forging steel into smaller gears than before.”  
“Gears? Son, all you require for a blunderbuss is a steel tube and a trigger.”  
“Gears provide strength that may advance our armaments.”  
“Say what you will, I’m sticking to spark-and-powder.”  
“Keres, I do not mean to become impatient, but scribbling in a notebook becomes tiresome, even for myself. How much longer will this trip last, do you surmise?”  
“We are two weeks from landfall, at this rate, last I checked, Blackwood. I’ve got more men to meet. I hear, too, we’ve a couple lasses on our journey. I’ve got no sweetheart back home, but had you not come on this journey, I’d imagine you may've.”  
“No, sir, I’ve no woman.”  
The skipper chuckled. “I was facetious.” he said, as he stepped out of the small one-window subsurface room, reserved to the man with long black hair. He was curled up into the corner of his bed, his knees rest up and his leatherbound laid on top of them. He was drawing, now, a change from his writing of earlier--poems, thoughtful phrases, concepts to flesh out--he was now drawing of weapons--crossbows, blunderbuss, even, he thought, a sword with a switch mechanism within.  
The scribbling of the charcoal-ink pen became too much for his ears, eventually, and he laid it down. He stood--nearly bumping his head on the short ceiling--and shut his cabin door, locking it. The sky was turning a deep purple, and soon enough, it would be twilight; unacceptable with which to write, or draw. He, yet, was not tired. He laid flat as he could on the small bed of hide and hewn wool, bound to wood by a daft idiot’s upholstery. It was uncomfortable, to say the least--nothing like his comfortable sheets at home, which he sold.  
Fabian grew up in a rough slum south of the mainland Rittish capital--Southern Rittish men were seen to be grindingly philosophic and godless, but they were of the nation regardless. Fabian’s appearance perfectly described Sudrittish men; thin, dextrous, and too smart for his own good. Some Sudritts had their salt in the battlefield, as marksmen and strategists, but many thought war to be unnecessary--especially the Rit-Freusca war. Fabian was among this journey for several reasons--more than he’d let on before. One, of course, to furnish a mill-parish, and two, to hone his craftsmanship in an environment where he would not have to witness a better man’s work every single day. The third reason, of course, was because he’d heard rumors of the beasts that lurk the forest depths. Deer as tall as houses, some say, and beasts black as night. He’d no desire to hunt, them, no… He wanted to study them. He’d wanted to see what made life tick outside the common world. Ouestribu was assumed to be of the same continent as Verdoirêt, but nobody has proven such, yet. Ouestribu was far south of the continent, so many believe it to be untrue simply because of the wild distance- but to say so is to say it’s unbelievable that Quelance sits it’s empire upon the very same continent of Freusca.  
Fabian, eyes closed, laid out on his bed, listened to the creak and shift and splash of the rocking boat as it skipped along the sea. He’d been to sea, before, too. He’d gone to îleorger quite frequently, actually--Mortacier, their specific billet of steel, was quite fascinating to work with, and he could only, of course, get it from them. The îleorger weren’t so different from the Rittish--they imperialized, and they warred with their rivals--the Quelance, Fabian didn’t know so well, as he’d hardly truly known the Freusca.   
Ouestribu, Fabian thought, must know whether or not the myths of Verdoirêt were true. He’d heard of men who glow in the dark, beasts black as night, trees wide as buildings… Fabian would discover these things himself, before he’d get the chance to ask a Ouesterner, he realized.  
He turned in his blankets, trying to get comfortable.  
Ritan was known for it’s navy. Ships with plate armor. Cannonade heavier than lead. Gunpowder stronger than lightning. Of course, the Freuscan fleet was comparable, and much greater in numbers. The only reason Ritan has been so successfully fighting the Freuscans off, is because the Rittish have the tactics used by Ouesterners, those of hiding among the trees, striking calmly--at least when they have land-based battles. In tide-battles, the Ouesterners taught the Rittish to bury spikes in the sand--or, in cases where they are the invading force, to move their boats quickly and unpredictably. The Ouestribu have no knowledge of war at sea, though, only invasions. They’ve taken a lot of those and yet they stand.  
“Blackwood.” came a knock at his door. How could he have forgotten? It was Friday; it’s time for the ship’s dinner. “You awake?”  
“Yes, sir, one moment.” he called out in the dark room--lit only now by moonlight reflecting off of the waves.  
“I’m happy to have our first dinner as a crew.” Keres said. “I want everyone to be there.”  
“I know, sir, I’m hungry, too.” Fabian said, fumbling with the blankets, trying to get up out of bed and to the door.  
“We ought to put some meat on those bones. A sailor never hesitates to eat, you know this!”  
“Keres,” he said, opening the door, “I’m coming.”  
“Right, boy, go sit.”  
Fabian, with a sort of nervous look on his face, shut the door behind him and walked to the mess hall- since the ship was little, twelve men had to fit into this room hardly the size of a carriage-barn. About 8 were already in the lower-lower deck that contained it. Fabian already heard conversation that informed him he wasn’t going to be the ship outcast this time.  
“Oi, mummy, what’re you doing all bandaged up?” he heard a bearded, weathered sailor ask of a man who definitely did give the impression that he was attempting to appear as a mummy--only his eyes were revealed. He was, however, wearing proper clothing over the bandages--by now, he wore a hide jacket dyed blue, over a standard white shirt--puffs not included. His pants were tight and black, and his boots looked of boiled leather.  
“I suffered great scalds in the geysers of Montaglace.”  
“You’ve ventured to Montaglace, huh? Many men freeze before they make it past Empire de l’Hommes.” an eloquently spoken man said.  
“De l’Hommes is chilly, but my men took me through.”  
“How did you end up in a geyser, then, mate, if you’d a team of blokes?” the bearded man asked.  
“I heard they’d provide me with some sort of strength. It is apparently untrue, my friends.” The bandaged man spoke with a tongue Fabian’d never heard before. Like he was nobility, he thought.  
The men cried in laughter. “Geyser that gives you strength? Who told you that?”  
“Why, the great king of Freusca told me that.”  
The men laughed again. “King of Freusca!”  
It was obvious at this point that the man was being facetious to cover up the true reason for his bandages. “Tell me, forsooth, how did thee truly acquire your great wound?” asked another man, of another upbringing.  
“Alright, call my bluff, won’t you? I got frostbite in my travels past De l’Hommes. It truly is very cold; and I’d never any men.”  
“Ah-hah! Tell me more of your stories, mate!” the bearded man asked. The bandaged man sits, and invites everyone else to do so. The room was full at this point- all twelve men, including Keres, had joined the crowd to listen to the man. Everybody scrambled to find a seat- some men sat closer to each other than others, but regardless, it was shoulder-to-shoulder at the long table. Lots of jerked meat, dried vegetables, and a massive, bubbling pot of soup had already been set, as well as a waxed wooden bowl at every seat, with a washcloth set under it. The rule of sailing was to bring your own spoon. The bandaged man waited until everybody was seated, and then he stood.  
“Friends,” he spoke out, quieting the crowd. “My name is Occam. I am of the Terrouge--the great island-continent south of Quelance. I journey here to complete my goal of exploring the world. If you’ve not heard my story, I attained these wounds in my journey north of Empire de l’Homme. I was left in the cold as I travelled toward Montaglace--the land of frozen mountains. I never stepped foot.”  
“Aye, it is clear you’ve determination, nonetheless!” the bearded fellow cheered.   
“Quite, sir. I imagine it will not steer me away to try once more. I decided to take a trip to a new land, to see new sights instead. Have any of you seen Verdoirêt, other than Keres?”  
The crowd murmured. Occam sat back down, and sipped of seafarer’s rum. “Nobody,” he called out, “Nobody’s seen Verdoirêt? Ah, well, have any of you heard of the rumors of the forest land?”  
“Oi! That’s all we’ve got to share!” a yell, followed by mass laughter. “Keres, tell me, do the seas of Verdoirêt really harbor Kraken and Siren?”  
“I’ve not yet been lured, but I have seen writhing pools.”  
“Yes, sir,” Occam laughed, “I hear they blame that on the ‘Metoile,’ the Star Mother.”  
Everybody silenced, to understand--and raise questions about--what the man had just said.  
“Who’s ‘they,” Keres asked, “and who’s the ‘Star Mother?”  
“Oh, the Fae, and their Metoile.” Occam spoke with the illusion of knowledgeable tone. “The Fae are the men who live on Verdoirêt. They look strange.”  
“Strange enough to wear bandages upon their visage?”  
“Quite, I’d imagine.” The bandaged man admitted, “...but believe me, my friend, when I say I’ve been bathed in the cold.”  
The whole crowd shifted uncomfortably. The soup had long been passed around, and men were biting on their jerked meat entrees, some dipping it in the soup. It was clear who did, and who did not bring their own spoons. Fabian had, of course, this being not his first ride upon the sea. “Let’s speak of our homes, instead. All who’ve a story to bear, and the tongue to twist it well, craft us tales of your heritage.” Keres said.  
Of course, the rowdy bearded man spoke first. “Aye, I come of Norsritan--you lot know the type,” he pointed to himself, “Big and hairy. It’s cold, up in Norsritan. We’re built for it. I still doubt I’d survive anywhere north of,” he spoke this next statement with a tin-filled Squirish tongue, fit not for Oxitan words. “Empy-air day lawms. Mont-glass chills my heart to speak of.”  
“Aye, and it chills my very soul!” Occam said.  
“My home, Norsritan, brings with it a pride I’ve seen no other nationality take to heart. Norsritan homesteads are built around the fireplace, all work revolves around the fireplace. We lodge ourselves away in the winter, and chop as many trees as we can during the summer--as well as hunt as many deer and small game… It’s a wholesome living--have a bunch of kids, keep a hunting dog… I miss it back there.”  
“Why’re you out here, then? It sounds like you’d love to be back home.”  
“Hjemlengsel,” he spoke Norsrit fluently--it was clear now that Squirish was his second, and Oxitan was his third. “How I long to return. I come to Ver-dwar-ay to find a medicinal herb that I believed would be here. My daughter is very, very sick.”  
“What is your name, friend?” Occam spoke up. It seemed he cared about his quest.  
“I am Trygve.”  
“Speak again?”  
“My name is Trygve. ‘Trig-vee” he spoke out.  
“Trygve, what herb do you seek?”  
“Of the Lignidiem tree--the Day’s Tree.”  
“Ah, I’ve heard tales of their candescent leaves, who’s warmth would cure the frostbite of Niflheim, aye, I search of them as well, among other things.”  
“Aye, perhaps we may search together, Occam.”  
“I imagine that may improve our outcomes, Trygve.” the man stood up and, approaching him, held a gloved hand out. Trygve turned and shook his hand at the wrist--as soldiers do before a duel. The men sat back down--and the clock began to tick.  
“More stories?” Keres called out,  
“Oui, j’en ai un! I’ve got a story about my disheartening nation, vous Rittes, mind my Oxitan not--I am but a renegade, searching for info about where the Freuscans trample, to sell it to the Rittish queen. Mais, I’ve a great tale of a Freuscan noble.”  
“Tell us, then, your name!”  
“Je m’appelle Guillaume. Rittish men call me ‘Guy,’ and de l’Hommes call me Vilhelm. You may call me whichever. I was born and raised in the Freuscan countryside, by my father alone, who once told me this story over campfire and soup. We had no home. We lived in a camp that moved whenever the game ran thin. I learned well to hunt, and better to hide from the Ritts who torched my land every time we were found. My father committed suicide when I was fourteen. I imagine you wonder, ‘Why sell information to the Ritts, if they ran you around as a boy?’ and the answer is this…  
It was not the Ritts who drove my father to suicide. It was our own dieu damné government, who taxed him out of his damned brains. Right in front of the collection officer, I’m told, my father stole the man’s gun and blew his own sodding brains out right there. From that day, I vowed to sell the intentions of the Freuscan bourgeoisie to see some day their heads on a platter. I fight for the men of Freusca, not those… demons, in charge.”  
“Aye, I’ll drink to that!” the Norsritt cheered, and raised a toast to the crowd.  
The Freuscan began again, after burning his sorrows in a rum-filled red wine that he’d brought from home. He loved wine, but it just wasn’t strong enough to let him forget… “Oui, let me tell the story now, no more about me.”

“The year is 1362,” he started, and he stood, finding some sort of stage upon which to speak--it ended up being a crate of salt-brick. “In north Freusca, even before the age-long Rittish war began, a fencer of Freusca is stranded in the countryside. He sets up his camp for the late night. He hunts himself a rabbit to eat. Even finds some herbs to garnish it with.” the Ox was swaying about on the crate, his speech slurring increasingly as he sipped of his rum-and-wine from the old bottle. “Once he finished his meal, he made a last attempt at a smoke signal, to perhaps rejoin his troupe. No luck, of course, so he unpacks his bedroll, and finds a low canopy under which to nap, and retrace his steps in the morning. However, somebody did see his smoke signal, for he was closer to Empire de l’Hommes than he’d remembered. The barbarians--at the time, de l’Hommes was in poverty, which forced their men to disband, in a way, and take care of themselves. The men covered in furs and leather tied the fencer up before he’d even awoken. They took his food and his supplies, and tied him to a tree aside their own camp. Once he finally awoke, to the scent of roasting bear, he fell right into a panic.  
“Qu'est-ce que c'est?” he called, ‘What is this?’  
“Schlaf ruhig, Fechter. Wir können deine Zunge nicht verstehen.” the large barbarians yelled at him, ‘Sleep still, fencer. We cannot understand your tongue.’  
The fencer’s Barrish--the language of de l’Hommes--was rusty to say the least, but he knew of what they spoke. “Tu dois me laisser partir--Du musst mich gehen lassen.” You must let me go!  
“Sprich nicht, Ox. Wir stehen nicht zur Debatte.” Speak not, Ox. We’re not up for debate. Aye, I will speak the rest in Queen’s tongue, Squirish, to… soothe my brain.  
“I’ve a troupe of fencers, as me! They will find you, and you will not survive!”  
“How a tied wolf calls for it’s dead brothers,” the Barr said to his comrades, which roused laughter.  
“I’ll… I’ll tell you anything!”  
“Tell me this, Ox.”  
“Yes, what is it?  
“Reckon me how much you be worth in meat?”  
This caused the Ox to take a deep breath, and gulp.   
“I’m so thin!” he called. “Lithe, and thin, a fencer, I am. My bones are all I’ve got, and even they will crunch under your teeth!”  
“Yes, sir. Now reckon me the cost of your gear.”  
“I am of King’s men--my gear is as fine as it comes! Buckler and rapier of fine steel! Chain of God on my chest, I will vouch for that!”  
“Yes, not thinly armored, are you?”  
“No, of course not. I am of the best fencers in my troupe, as I am so hard to hit!”  
“Speak to me, then, what the worth of your life is, if it’s not the meat on your bones but the steel on your chest. You made not that steel, I presume. Reckon me this--be we in poverty, thin as can be, typically, what allows you the upper hand?”  
“My training, of the king’s right hand man!”  
“What of you do you value most? Your gear? Your training?”  
“I value my training, the most, for if I’d no training, I’d be a boy with a stick.”  
“Okay, then you must not mind if we take your body, boy.” the Barrs said, now surrounding the man.  
They cut him up with their spears.

The crowd laughed. “So what was the point?”  
“The Barrs told him a lesson! Value yourself above things granted to you by others!”  
“That’s a bit of a snobbish story.”  
“Think not--think of yourself as the platform upon which the rest that makes ‘you’ is built--that’s what I learned from that story.”  
“Aye, the Ox and their stories about the hearts of men.”  
The Freuscan stepped off of the salt crate, and sat back down. Men started to disperse to their quarters--including Fabian, who went to bed.  
As he slept, the ship creaked and swayed in the night. It brought upon him dreams of cradling and soft caress--that which he refused to admit he longed for.  
The harsh sunlight struck his eyelids through the small circular window. He sat straight up, and took a moment to remember just where he was. He stood, remembering to crouch low, and put on his daily garb--a white shirt, his tights, under which tied his belt, and a black leather vest, tied shut at his breast. Today, he put on his actual boots, instead of the sandals men wore over their socks to relax without getting splinters. The boots made him much taller than before, and he had to crouch lower. He was happy on this ship. He was looking forward to the life he was going to create--in light of the rumors of ‘fae,’ and ‘kraken.’ He was going to build his own mill, and he would house some serfs to work. It was going to be nice. Once he’d stepped out of his quarters, though, he noticed a quietness… Much more quiet than it should be, even for the early morning. The men who were to clean the floors weren’t doing it--even now, there was dust and salt where his feet stood. The men who were to cook weren’t doing it--he’d smelled no meat cooking. He decided to climb out to the open deck…  
A crowd was gathered. They were murmuring things in all of their distinct languages to all of their cliques. Fabian pushed inward, to the crowd. “What’s happened,” he asked, until he saw it.  
The dead body of Trygve. Covered in vomit and blood.  
“Trygve’s been killed.” said Keres.  
“Oh.”  
“And now we’ve to figure out who’s done it before he kills every single one of us.”  
“...”  
The men all stood, silent. None of them looked away from the body, not even for a moment. Occam began to speak. “I think I know what you’re all thinking about me.” he said. “The stranger covered in bandages, who insists he’s only been frostbitten. I wanted to help him, I really did.”  
“You’d better shut your gud forbannet munn--before you let slip something you shouldn’t, and I throw you off the damn keel and watch your bandages float away.” said Trygve’s comrade.   
“I want to find out who did it.” Occam said. “I fear a traitor as much as any man at sea.”  
“Aye, you fear a traitor among traitors, don’t you. You’ve friends, here, have you not?”  
“My friends are your friends, Norsrit. I am no traitor.”  
“Show me your flesh.” the Norsrit asked.  
“I am afraid that is not among the things I will do. My flesh should not resign my innocence.”  
“If your flesh will not resign your innocence, bare it to me, won’t you?”  
“It would needlessly pain me so.”  
The Norsrit growled, in a way. “Aye, I do know that of frostbite… I apologize.” the Norsrit seemed to come back to his senses.  
“Bitter, I am not. I understand that man’s mind grasps at threads.”  
“Men, we can’t leave him lain upon the floor. Get him somewhere. We will set him a pyre with what we have.” called a crewman.  
“Aye… That is his desire, I suppose. I… I should… find some way to return to Norsritan and… and tell his family.” the Norsrit began to quietly sob, as his comrades less acquainted took his friend and placed him upon his retrieved bed cot, with his belongings being moved atop him as kindling.  
Occam approached the sobbing viking. “May I have your name?” he asked of him.  
“I am called Mellark.”  
“My friend, Mellark. I ask that you assist me in acquiring Lignidiem, so that your friend may not pass in vain.”  
“Nay, Occam. I apologize. I cannot stand to let his entire family live without him--not for longer than they have to. Even be it worth his daughter’s life, his family be more than that. I hate to say it, sooth, but two is less than ten.”  
“Noble as any, my friend, Mellark.” the covered man seemed to change his mind of something--folding a leaf stuck to his gloved hand and placing it into a pocket. “I wish you great speed.”  
Fabian had lost interest in the passed man, and he walked to the bulwark, and leaned over to gaze at the sea. He didn’t feel careless… he was just comfortable with death. Not comfortable with the fact that somebody on this ship might kill him, but he knows Trygve rests, finally, somewhere else. His daughter may get to rest soon, too. Maybe with her father. Nobody knows, yet.  
He watched the other ships bob up and down on the current. He could see three, from here. The Egida del Gran Puerto had several sails… It looked less like a traveller’s boat, and more like a boat that soldiers travelled on. It had cannons’ doors, shut for now, and it looked to be scratched all over it’s hull. Fabian reached for the knapsack that lay on his left hip--without breaking eye-contact with the Egida, he retrieved a spyglass. He observed men and, strangely, women, each adorned with different--but nonetheless prestigious--armored garbs. He couldn’t make out the details, but many had spots of gold, and silver, and all of their swords were rest in golden scabbards at their hips. Their helmets, on the opposite, were sort of like steel chain veils bolted to strange, rigid metal headdresses. All of the soldiers mouths were covered by red scarf tied around their neck, pulled up to their noses. He noticed many of them wore their hair in buns--even the men. These were, of course, Soldiers of Gran Puerto--or as the Freuscs and Ritans called the place to the southwest edge of Freusca, the Amarrer, and her Doves.  
Fabian spotted a Dove spying back at him. It caused him to jump when they met glass. He saw her wave, and could tell she’d laughed. He waved back. She had a lantern at her side--Fabian could hardly see the glow against the morning sun, but the spyglass helped a lot. He raised his hand in a ‘one moment’ symbol. He rushed to the lower deck to grab his lantern, and when he got back to the bulwark, she was standing over there, tapping her foot sarcastically. He made spastic motions to get her attention again--and she raised a hand, bringing the spyglass back up to her eye. Fabian lit his lantern, and covered the flame with his hand over and over again, until the dove repeated the action. Fabian then began to sign in morse code, hoping the dove would understand.  
“Hello.” he said over a thirty second period of ons-and-offs.  
It took her a while to respond. “Hi.” she said simply, though.  
“Name.”  
“I am Everest.”  
“I am Fabian.”  
“Interesting.” the conversation had already taken five minutes.  
“To Verdoiret, q.” Morse conversations often lacked grammar--it was the goal to take as little time to produce as much information as possible. Often, to indicate a question mark, they will simply end their sentences with ‘Q’s  
“Verdoiret, q.” she asked.  
“The land of green forest. You are headed, question.”  
“Yes. You, q.”  
“I go to make home. You, q.” Fabian had especially slowly blinked out.  
“I go to study.”  
“Study, q.”  
“The rumors of PDLN.”  
“PDLN, q.” he asked.  
“Palacio de la Naturaleza” is what the Doves called Verdoirêt, apparently. The Palace of Nature.  
“We call it Verdoiret.”  
“Where hail you, q.” she asked.  
“I am from Sudritan.”  
“I am from Gran Puerto.”  
“I see that. Among knights, q.”  
“I travel with Men of God.”  
“Noble. Do you hear many rumors, q.”  
“Of Fae. You, q.” she responded slowly.  
“Of Fae. One upon my ship knew much.”  
“His name, q.”  
“Occam.”  
“Occam. Hail he, q.”  
“Terrouge.”  
“Terrouge, q.”  
Fabian stopped a nearby crewman to ask, “What do they call Terrouge in Amarrer?”  
“I believe it is called Sabana.” he replied after a moment of thought.  
Fabian turned back to Everest. “Sabana.”  
“Sabana. It is hot.”  
“I attest.”  
“I’ve duties. Return later. Will signal.”  
“Yes.”  
The woman gave a thumbs-up from a quarter league away, and walked under the deck of the ship. Once Fabian turned around to the deck once more, he noticed that many of the men had dispersed. Some time had passed. His stomach growled, but group-dinner was served on Friday, so he’d just have to get some food himself.  
His boots made creaks upon the shaky staircase to the lower deck, and the finally-returned scent of vegetables being boiled in each other had filled the place, if not for the salt-water soaked floorboards. Soup was always served, but, even as a paid-attendee for this voyage, one had to pay for his meal. Some brought their own, highly preserved food, but quite heavy baggage was the result of two weeks of food.  
“Hello.” Fabian said to the woman who sold the soup that her friends were to make.  
“Fifteen pieces.” she said blankly.   
“Alright.” Fabian said, retrieving a 10-piece coin and a 5-piece coin, sliding it onto the table. She pushed forward a bowl of soup and moved back into the kitchen, calling back;  
“If you don’t return it, there’s nowhere for you to run.”  
“I get it, girl.”  
She returned to the hole in the wall. “Speak nicely to me.”  
“You get to threaten me, but I can’t call you ‘girl?”  
“That’s right, Sudritt. Many a child of Ulruzia could tear you to pieces. We grow burly there.”  
“I find value in things more than strength.”  
“Your bones don’t.”  
“My bones aren’t thinking beings.”  
“But if they were, do you think instead they’d don glasses and read tales of roads less travelled and think--maybe I ought to bring this to heart as a person? No, foolish, they would be busy housing your brain in your head. Eat your soup and bring me my bowl.”  
Fabian walked to the table to eat. He could hear an argument occuring on the deck above him.  
“Why’ve you to snoop around and ask questions when you’re the primary suspect?” the Freuscan asked aloud.  
“Okay,” Occam replied, “For one, I disrespect that you impose your disposition as truth. Second, I asked you what you wanted to do in Verdoirêt!”  
“I speak to no masked man.”  
“Is frostbite really so hard to believe?”  
“I’ve never once seen a man walk upright in bandages with full-body frostbite.”  
“Well here I am, Guillaume.”  
“I am implying, that you’ve something to hide!”  
“Is flesh the decider of crime? I just do not understand!”  
“You spoke of Fae.”  
“I did speak of Fae. Passing rumors, my friend, as you did.”  
“Fae that have markings upon their body.”  
“They’ve lots.”  
“You admitted that a Fae would have to wear a full body cast to cover them up.”  
“From what I’ve heard, friend, they would.”  
“So tell me, if a Fae knew of a boat westward upon his land, would he not do everything to dispatch that vessel?”  
“I imagine native men find no solace in travellers.”  
“So Occam. I have all the reason to be wary of you.”  
“I imagine, wary, yes.”  
“A man with boundaries I already am. Wary boundaries lie far.”  
“Tell me, spy.”  
“...”  
“What does it feel like to betray your home?”  
“Aye, you bastard. Get away from me.”  
Some rough-housing must have occured, Fabian gathered, by the heavy steps. He ate quietly.  
“What have you placed upon me?”  
“It is a sedative.”  
“A sed…” and then he heard him collapse. He stood, quickly placing his bowl onto the table where the woman remained cooking.  
“Thank you,” she said. Fabian did not respond. He rushed quickly up the stairs. There was no way he could be the only one hearing this fight, right?  
Occam did not even pay mind to Fabian’s eyes, watching him drag the sleeping body of Guillaume out of the deck. Fabian stepped hard as he strode to stop the man.  
“What are you doing?”  
“Aye, must everyone snoop?” Occam said, dropping Guillaume’s legs, and retrieving another leaf out of his knapsack. Fabian quickly retrieved a knife, and placed it upon the man’s chest. “You’d better think twice.” said the mummy.  
“What,” Fabian huffed as he pushed the thin arm at bay, “are you doing?!”  
“I’m defending my land.” Fabian’s bony arm was overpowered, but not before he felt the cracks and gushing of a thick, stout dagger plunging deep into flesh and bone--tearing fabric and spraying hot blood on his wrist. That was the last sensation that passed through his brain before he fell under the sedative’s heavy blow. The leaf fell off of his neck much too quickly, though.  
A hard kick to the face after airy and pink dreams of fungal highlands.  
“Wake up.” said the woman’s voice.  
“Where am I? Did I get him?” sputtered quickly out of Fabian’s mouth, his resolve unhindered by the unintentional nap.  
“We’re trying to figure out what happened.”  
“Occam. Is Occam dead?” Fabian’s eyes adjusted--and pink spores finally left his mind. Now he only saw rusted bars and soaked wood--and a crouching, olive-skinned grey-haired woman.  
“Occam is alive, and he’s in the bloody cell next to ya.” she said. “Now tell me, what happened?”  
“I heard Occam trying to subdue Guillaume. I rushed to help, and before I knew it, I’d plunged a dagger into his chest, and he’d poisoned me to sleep.”  
“See, what he says doesn’t quite line up.”  
“What does he say?”  
“He goes, ‘Hey missus, I’m innocent, I swear ye!” she twists his pleas into her own accent of speech; a strange mixture of Midritt and Monteglacian. “See,” she continued to mimic the man, “what all happened is this; I saw that dastardly rat poisinin’ my friend Guillaume! So I pull me dagger on him, what ye, and he pulls a leaf out his pocket! I say, it must have been pretty toxic, so I let my guard down to spank it right back at him! But alas, he must’ve been on the switch, cause he stabbed me right when I did! Bloody hurt, did it!”  
“That’s the opposite of what happened! He’s trying to frame me!” Fabian said, upon his own individual realization.  
“See, I believe ye more than him, but right now we’ve not quite got the proof. Guillaume is up and striding again, and he’s lookin’ at the knife to see if it tells a story by itself. Course, his story lines up with yours, but he just wants to be sure that Occam was up ‘n trying to kill’em”  
“What’s your name?”  
“I am Aelanna. Much call me Anna to spare their tinny tongues.”  
“Where’s Keres?”  
“He’s trying to talk to Occam. See if he breaks.”  
“I think he’s a Fae.”  
“A Fae,” she asked, inquisitively. “Like a baby’s fairytales? You all reek of lunacy, I say. You all speak of Fae, and I say--stab the man with a steel blade if you think him to be Fae. Oh, wait, you went and did it.”  
“No, trust me. Didn’t you hear his stories? They are of real places! A place he comes from, I assume.”  
“You mean to say he implied he was from Verdoirêt to you--and you believed it? Not only that, but that the land harbors inhuman Fae. Fairies. Damn you all to hell, I’m starting to believe that mummy my damned self.”  
“No, Anna, you don’t understand!”  
“Speak unto me like I’m a dumb baby once more.”  
“...”  
“I am a rational woman. I am using common sense to show you lunatics that you’re spouting drool.”  
“...”  
“Now, I say, speak to me, like I’m the crazy one, again.”  
“I see, now. I apologize, Anna.” Fabian maybe realized what was actually happening. He wasn’t in a dream of pink spores. He stood and hung his head low. He towered over Aelanna, but she beat him through and through in muscle. Her grey hair was short, and curly. She was wearing normal civilian-sailor garb, spare the fact that her beige vest had several insignias embroidered into it, and her puffy undershirt was tucked into her tights as, well, tightly as it could be. Her sleeves were rolled up, to spare them staining during cooking. Her face was much younger than hair like that would typically suggest. Fabian’s not the most polite on this ship, but he wasn’t going to mention it. Not until she asked him;  
“What the hell are ye gazing about, then?”  
“Oh, it’s…”  
“It’s me hair, isn’t it. Well ye should know better than to treat a lady on her flaws.”  
“Why is it like that? I don’t find it unsettling, mind you.”  
“Have ye seen the way I run around this vessel? I’m surprised I’ve any hair at all! The stress gets to me faster than a pot of oil nicks my eyes. Speaking of which, I’ve got to go make sure those damn lasses aren’t pissing up my soup. Got to chase them round with a whoop.”  
“Have fun.”  
“Oh, it’s a ball!” she called from the staircase.  
Fabian sat back down, and eventually got to counting the grains in the floorboards to pass the time. He could eventually hear another argument. This time, it was Keres’ voice, and Occam.  
“Take off the bandages.”  
“I will not.”  
“I have to seal the wound or else you’ll bleed out.”  
“You will not touch me.”  
“Occam. You are on rails to die in less than five minutes.”  
“You know not of my strength.”  
“Occam. It is human biology. You’ve been bleeding from a damn important artery for 20 minutes. You are dying.”  
“Tell me, then, sailor, why no blood yet falls.”  
Silence, for a moment.  
“That’s…”  
Yet another shuffling occurred, but the sound of Keres’ heavy boots backpedaling ended it quickly. Occam clearly struggled against the bars in the cell behind him--they were separated by iron-reinforced plank.   
“I think it’s quite clear who the murderer is.” Keres said.  
“Good luck dealing with it.” the man said, out of breath. Though Fabian was unsure of faerie interference, he definitely wondered why the fae would send a clearly weak and stupid one in the first place. So quick to give up, he wondered.  
“I have a few means to an end.” Keres said. In the silent room--spare their three heavy breaths--small metal balls clinked. Footsteps lightly tapped down the stairs, once more. Keres seemed to hesitate at this.  
“Hello, Fabian.” Guillaume said, covered in sores and red streaks, for what little visible skin was present. “Mind not my condition. I wanted to thank you for saving my life.”  
“I was only trying to save my own ass, but I suppose I’m happy to help.” Fabian let a fanged smile beam. Guillaume chuckled. “Now can you let me out of the cage, so I can watch what’s going to happen, well, over there?” Fabian pointed a thumb behind his shoulder.  
“Sorry, friend, but right now, I’ve something else to attend to.” he said, his pupils becoming needle-narrowed on the scene behind his cage. He retrieved the knife adorned in sapphires and gold, and strode out of his view. Keres shrieked a little, and his hand must have slipped the trigger.  
A bullet bust through the wood to his left, barely missing him. It brought with it unusually bluish blood--like a deeper purple.  
“Guillaume. Please put down the knife.”  
“I’m not dead.” Guillaume’s voice spoke, but with an unusual spike.  
“I know you’re not, Guy. I picked you up off the damned floor myself.”  
“I mean to say--” he choked a little. He stopped walking toward Keres.  
“Put the knife down.”  
“I-...” it fell to the floor. “What happened?”  
“I don’t know, Guy, why don’t you tell me?”  
“Where am I?”  
“Guillaume. You were just walking toward me with a knife.”  
“No, I wasn’t. I was dreaming, just now!”  
“Guillaume, I suggest you lie down a bit. Maybe that leaf is much more poisonous than we thought.”  
Fabian heard Occam mumbling through the hole that the bullet created. He was mumbling something that, to Fabian’s ears, sounded entirely incoherent--like it was a language he’d never heard before. It was primarily vowel-sounds and sharp ‘kuh’ sounds that stood out. Death rattles left his mouth, and Fabian heard a pitiful sound of slumping over. Keres fell for no bluff, and loaded two more pieces of lead into the heart. Fabian called over to him;  
“Get me out of this cage before you hit me through the wall!”   
“Oh, I’m sorry, Fabian.” he turned the small corner around the cell. He took the ring of keys and awkwardly shoved them into the bar-lock. “Now,” he sighed exhaustively, “we can get back to sailing like we were supposed to, and god-dammit if another mention of ‘fae’ crosses my ears, we’re turning this boat around. I’m not dropping you 10 men off to your deaths.”  
“Keres,” Fabian said, standing up, “Do we really know very much about Verdoirêt?”  
“No. There’s been one camp set up on the shore, and they’re just waiting for more men to start building a colony.”  
“Are we… sure… that the camp still stands?”  
“Fabian, on a boat 400 leagues away from civilization, the whole world could be plunged into hellfire and we’d be oblivious for at least two weeks.”  
“...are we sure that we will survive?”  
“That’s why I’m so damn worried.”  
“You worry… about your voyagers?”  
“Of course, Fabian.”  
The pair walked over to the dead body.  
“That’s why this had to be done.”  
“I see.”  
“I don’t want to sound excited about defiling a body,” he whispered, finding yet another key, “but if this ‘fae’ stuff is the truth, I want to know about it.”  
“If they wanted to give him a proper sea-farer’s burial, they’d have to take the wrapping off anyway.”  
There was a sort of pause as the burning in Keres’ heart fuzzed up the nerves that enforced his will throughout his fingers. He opened the locked door, and it opened with a creak that set his thoughts aflame. He was nervous, to say the least. He set one foot into the brig, and the reverberation of his heavy steel-toed boot shook up his leg and straight to his spine, casting a strange static pins-and-needles through the rest of his body.  
One hand was soon rest on the rapidly cooling shoulder. A cold grip was set in. He pulled the cloth to cavitate a place between skin and cloth where a knife could cut with little injury.  
It all peeled away like a snake’s skin.  
Instantly, the pair noticed faintly… glowing… blue stripes, atop dark red skin--akin perhaps to the color leaves turn in the cold. Not pale, like the pair’s skins (though Keres had quite the sailor’s tan--his skin was a reddish color, too, but more like men of Amarrer), but not quite black, like native men of Terrouge. Some unseen sun-burnt hue.  
“Are these… tattoos?” Fabian asked.  
“Tattoos don’t glow.”  
“We don’t know what the men of Verdoirêt are capable of. Perhaps it’s some… bioluminescent ink, that they concocted with a native creature.”  
“Could very well be. In any sense of the term, I’m not convinced of fairy interference. This is just some native who thought he could come and kill us.”  
“Right, I think so, too. Fae are said to have strange powers. Not leaves and tattoos.”  
The pair left the door open as they both walked away, up the stairs. Fabian went to his bedroom. His mind was still numb, and his eyes were beginning to hurt… It was hardly noon, but Fabian fell asleep in his day-clothes. He dreamt again of pink spores.  
Something that felt like it was the border of reality and dream occurred.  
It was yet another argument, between an unfamiliar voice, and the Freuscan spy. It was right outside of Fabian’s bedroom door, so the evening sun lit the sea up out of Fabian’s window, and his eyes, struggling to keep themselves open, often played in his head with false script--instantly processing what had been heard to add to the scene. It was as if someone was speaking dreams to his ears.  
“I want you to keep to your god-damned self, dirty Freuscan rat.” yelled the voice that bordered on traumatized man and lucky child.  
“Mais, my friend, I was simply sparking conversation! You informed me you were of the Rittish army, I wanted to know more.”  
“You simple bastard, I say one thing about a Rittish army general and you’re on my tail about this army oxshit! I’m not a soldier.”  
“Why then, do you know a general in the very same army?”  
“Leave me.”  
“Non. I have been disrespected and now I am entitled to one thing.”  
“Sure you are. The piss out of my tool.”  
“C'est drôle, non?” That’s funny, isn’t it?  
“Tu ne peux pas me cacher derrière ta langue.” the man said in perfect Freuscan. You cannot hide behind your tongue.  
“Vielleicht nicht auf Froizörecht, aber warum nicht auf Böaretzh?” Maybe not in Oxitan, but what about Barrish?  
“Hör auf mit dem Geräusch.” Stop the noise. Guillaume must have never encountered a man of many tongues like himself, because he was struggling now to think of a tongue to throw back at the man. “Just stop. Get away from me. I ask you.”  
Fabian’s blinking eyes finally placed the fantastical effort required to stay open. He stopped dreaming in-and-out.  
“What is your name?” Guillaume asked.  
“I’m Rhett Castor. Now will you leave me alone?”  
“What do you want to do in Verdoirêt?”  
“Bloody hell do you care?” Fabian instantly connected a familiarity. Ask their name. Ask their dealings with the forest land.  
He got up, and, as he was still in his commoner clothes--just quite ruffled up from tossing and turning--he opened the door to the argument. Rhett Castor was a man who dressed very similarly to Fabian himself, yet instead of everything either black or white, Castor wore several shades of beige and grey--it seemed he just wanted to be clothed in any way whatsoever. It was Sudrittish fashion, specifically, just not very high-effort. Castor had brown hair with an almost unnoticeable red tinge. He had a five o’clock shadow riddled with scars. A tattoo upon his chest was grazing at the visible places on his neck.  
“Oh, my good bloody God. Here comes another bloody-damned vampire. Can you two duke it out yourselves?”  
“No, I’m not a vampire. I’m worried about this conversation.”  
“Sure, do you live on my side? I notice you’re Sudrittish. Get this bloody Ox to shut his cob.”  
“Guillaume, are you feeling alright?” he and the spy made eye contact. “I don’t think you quite got over that poison.”  
“Poison? Who poisoned-” Castor sort-of panicked.  
“Guillaume and I were to-be victims of the native man Occam who tried to tear this ship apart.”  
“Mais, Fabian, so glad you’re here.” It seemed Guillaume had been processing the conversation very slowly. “The leaf got me good. I’ve been having strange dreams.”  
“We’re not worried about your dreams, Guillaume. I’m worried that you’re under the influence of something.”  
“I’ve not drank since Friday dinner. Worry you not.”  
“Not alcohol I’m worried about.” Fabian’s gloved hand grasped right at Guillaume’s neck. He turned his head to observe the festering sore atop his jugular vein. Fabian had a rash in the very same space.  
“Mais, ahaha, tu ne peux pas m'acheter le dîner en premier?”  
“I’m not hurting you.” he said, getting a closer look. “It’s much worse than my sore. Are you sure you’re alright?”  
“It’s just a bit of waxleaf poison. Stop fretting. It won’t kill me.”  
“No, it doesn’t look like waxleaf, Guillaume.” Waxleaf was used as a sedative. “Say, you didn’t seem jumpy to testify your own innocence against Occam, did you?”  
“What are you on about?”   
“You had to, quote, ‘find evidence,’ and when it came to be, you ran at Keres with a knife. My knife.” he said, now tightening his grip, which surprised Guillaume. “Waxleaf doesn’t change thinking patterns, and doesn’t intoxicate you longer than it makes you sleep. This isn’t waxleaf, and I think it bit you harder than it bit me.”  
“Enlevez vos mains de moi.”  
“Castor, was it?” Fabian turned to the man observing keenly now.  
“Yes, I’m Castor.”  
“I can’t speak a lick of Oxitan. Can you translate, for me, please?”  
“Sure, anything for a fellow Sudritt. Though I’m surprised you didn’t pick any Ox up living in Sudritan. He asked you to unhand him.”  
“Guillaume. I’m not hurting you. I’m trying to keep you still so I can see if this matches anything we know of.”  
“Du bist dumm.”  
“Oh, that’s in Barrish. He called you stupid.”  
“Why is he changing languages like that?”  
The Ox closed his eyes, and furrowed his brow. “Nunca lo sabrás”  
“That’s… That’s the language of Amarrer. I can’t understand it at all.”   
The ox smiled, finally. “Estoy muy enfermo. Necesito ayuda. Está dentro de mi cabeza.”  
“Here, I know a way to translate.” he said. The Ox instantly returned to a look of worry many times worse than before. Fabian let go when Castor pushed past him. He raised a fist, and grabbed him right where Fabian had just let go.   
“Speak Squirish.”  
“No.”  
Castor didn’t even hesitate to land a punch squarely on Guillaume’s cheek. “Speak.” he pulled Guillaume into the air by the man’s garb. “Squirish.”  
“Sorpresa” a childish grin streaked across the rat’s face once more. Castor let out a yelp and fell to his knees. Guillaume landed on his feet when dropped by Castor, and didn’t stagger at all.  
Fabian didn’t know what to do. “What happened?” he asked, as Castor rolled over to reveal the gold-and-sapphire blade deep in his stomach. Guillaume walked away without another thought. Fabian didn’t care--Castor was going to die.  
“Oh, my God.” he said. “Get me a doctor.”  
“I-... I’m the best we’ve got, Castor.”  
“Oxshit. Get me Keres.”  
“I don’t know where he is, and I don’t have time to find out…” Fabian retrieved a formless piece of fabric out of his knapsack. He didn’t have time to assess it’s use.  
“If you pull this dagger out of me I’m going to kick your bloody ass.”  
“Please, stay calm.”  
“Sure, I’m the one who needs to stay calm! I’ve got a bloody dagger in my stomach!” He pulled his back against a wall, and heaved a deep breath in. “Keres!” he called throughout the ship. Some stomping happened on the top deck.  
Fabian circled the injury with the cloth, and pushed down hard. Castor screamed, and began to hyperventilate. Fabian inched the little dagger out, and each time it slid, Castor groaned or yelped or made some other noise of significant discomfort and pain. It finally slipped out. Fabian pushed with all of his weight into the cloth now completely soaked with blood and unable to block any more from leaving his body. Fabian then took the small oil lamp off of his waist. He’d forgotten to take it off when he slept--thank the waves it didn’t break. He lit it up and, still pushing one hand into the wound, placed the broadest place on the dagger right on top of the flame.  
“Oh, you bloody-sick bastard. You’re not going to--”  
No noise left Castor’s mouth, that time. His eyes rolled back into his head and his breathing rate slowly returned to normal. He’d fainted. At least he was quiet, now, it would take a few more cauterizations to fully seal the wound.  
When Fabian had finally finished sealing the stab-wound (though Castor wouldn’t be able to do sit-ups for a month, because he couldn’t quite seal that deep without more advanced medical equipment, but otherwise he’d be fine, just bedridden) Keres finally entered the room. “I was called?”  
“About five minutes, ago, yes.”  
“I apologize, I was speaking to the Norsritt’s friend.”  
“Castor suffered a hard stab wound. Guillaume stabbed him.”  
“Don’t tell me I shot the wrong bastard.”  
“I don’t think you did, Keres.”  
“What? Shoot the wrong bastard? Why would Guillaume try to kill Castor if Occam was the right bastard?”  
“I don’t think Occam is dead.”  
“Oxshit. He got set apyre an hour ago.”  
“I think he really was a Fae. I think…”  
“Oh, haha, very funny, you think Occam the Big Bad Fae is mind-controlling Guillaume?”  
The look in Fabian’s eyes reflected complete sincerity, without a hint of hilarity. He brushed his fingers through his hair to clear them from his eyes.  
“Give me a god-damned break.” he sighed, looked at Castor, and then shook his head and his shoulders in a bit of a relaxing motion. “Let’s go find Guillaume, then.”  
They pulled Castor aside and put him into his room.   
“Guillaume?” Keres called into the hall. “I don’t want to hurt you. I want to keep you safe.”  
Fabian wiped his knife off, finally returned to his possession, and made sure that the burns didn’t render it unusable. He kept it brandished. Keres made a gesture to keep it low.  
“Which room is Guillaume’s?”  
Keres looked around a little. He cracked his neck in order to think a little more clearly--likely to clear the strain in his back, but he never quite got it to go all the way away. Being a skipper is hard work, you don’t have room for a right hand man.  
“That one.” he finally pointed, after having jogged his memory to yesterday, where he had a long conversation with each and every settler--provided they were in the mood, at least. Guillaume’s conversation was dodgy and… dishonest.  
Fabian knocked on the twiggy wooden door.  
“God dammit, Fabian, if he’d just stabbed a man he’s not going to come out or let you know he’s in there when you knock.”  
Fabian tried the knob. Keres slapped a palm over the center of his face, before pushing Fabian out of the way. “It’s my ship. I can bust it up if I like to.”  
He kicked the door in.  
Nobody was inside. “Let’s try Occam’s door.” Keres said, but the moment he turned around and out of the room, a pair of legs swung down from above the door frame and landed right on his shoulders. A split moment struggle led to Guillaume on the ground, and yet more blood to be shed.  
Fabian stepped over Keres and, making use of Guillame’s ghostly thin form, he picked him up by the collar of his shirt. (Fabian was thin, but Guillaume was thinner, and shorter--so even the twig of a man could hoist the body up). Fabian pushed the man, face first, into the bedroom wall, and in a dramatic and gory show he held the dagger up like a sacrificial implement, and pinned the tiny man right to his wall through the shoulder. No scream left his mouth. Nothing.  
While Guillaume struggled to remove himself from the dagger, or the dagger from the wall, Fabian quickly returned to Keres. Around his neck was a strange necklace-like piece of cord. It was thorned and tied tight to his neck. Blood leaked quickly around him and no breathing could be heard. His eyes were rolled back up into his head, and he convulsed, scratching and grabbing and making any attempt to breathe whatsoever, minding everything but the blood quickly leaking out of his jugular vein.  
Fabian had to retrieve the knife to free Keres.  
Guillaume fell to the floor and, like some strange revenant monster, stood up, with a devilish resolve, and immediately tried to capsize Fabian.  
Skillfully, and without hesitation, Fabian, using the same backhand knife position, cut Guillaume’s throat open. Much blood was shed today.  
The cord snapped with just a pull of the knife. Keres finally stopped his asphyxiated clawing, and finally began to breathe.  
There was a break of skin, clean, all the way around his neck, some places where the thorns had made holes, and most importantly, several of the metal thorns still in place, like shrapnel around his neck.  
“I have to get these thorns out before we can wrap this up, so that it doesn’t cause complications.”  
A bloody gurgle was the only reply.  
Fabian wiped all of the blood off of the knife one last time--blood of differing men often did not mix well.  
With each thorn painfully scooped out and laid aside, Keres coughed or gurgled or yelped some more.  
Fabian tore a stray piece of soft cloth from Keres’ formless garment around his waist with the knife. He tied it just loosely enough around the man’s neck to keep him from choking once more, but tight enough to collect all of the blood to let it sit still enough to clot.  
That would be quite the interesting scar, he thought. He was beginning to lose grasp on the dire situation at hand, and instead focused on the vanity of ‘earning a story.’  
“You’re going to be alright, Keres.”  
He spat out blood. A lot of blood. “I’m going to make sure that bloodydamn bastard lay dead.”  
He retrieved his flintlock from his side one more time, and loaded a lead ball right into the skull of his opponent.  
The two injured men laid asleep in their beds for the night, and Fabian, full of adrenaline and some newfound feeling growing inside of him, lopped the dead man off of the end of the ship.  
Nine men remain among the living, and Fabian is the last one to stand being touched by the leaf. He wasn’t having thoughts of betrayal. He wasn’t being controlled. No witch plagued his thoughts. He simply wanted to make it to Verdoirêt, build himself a cabin in the forest, and live alone.  
The uninformed 6 other residents slept, wondering what the cause of all of the gunshots were, and if they’d pierced the wood keeping them from sinking.  
Throughout the night, the ship rocks and sways. Fabian is awake. He’s on the top deck, gazing out at the calm sea, watching the currents of air tear ripples through it, as the very same spears of wind push the vessel westward. He sees all of the other ships’ oil lights glaring bright, their night-crews working to keep the vessels oriented, clean, and ready for the next day. The Qué de Nòu doesn’t have a night crew. Nothing to keep them drifting the right way overnight. It’s small enough to usually keep track, but anything can happen. He looks over at the Ediga, and wonders…  
This journey began only two days ago. In 48 hours, three men died. Fabian thought about Guillaume.  
It seemed the night before that he was genuinely just a seafarer moving to Verdoirêt just to… gather information. He was a transparent person, he had a background that checked out. Why would he throw what little he had away for a dead man?  
The only way Fabian could justify it was to say, “well, the Fae was controlling his mind!”  
But that raises several very, very important questions, and an immediate response of “Shut your lunatic gab.” If Guillaume was leashed by the poisonous herb, he wondered why he wasn’t. If Guillaume didn’t mean any of what he was doing, did he really deserve to die? Was he alive for the duration of that? How would, assume Occam was controlling Guy, how could Occam know how to speak all of the language that Guillaume could…?  
Fabian knew the answer to none of these questions.  
One question really bit at him.  
Was he in control of himself anymore? All day today he hadn’t been feeling right, but he was poisoned. Was it the seasickness? The indiscriminate wobbling and rocking and shifting floor beneath his feet, could that be defiling his thoughts?  
No, he surmised. That was not the reason.  
It wasn’t the poison, or the seasickness--he was surprised he hadn’t barfed up his guts, but he knew he was still… the one in control. He could tell, because he was thinking about it, right? His mind, him, he answered the questions, not some outside voice. Was that Occam’s tactic?  
Maybe it was all the blood he had to deal with today. It started off with a basically indecent dead man laid upon the very same stretch of floor he now stood on, and progressed violently until it ended with him slicing the throat out of a man. How did he… know what to do?  
Was he possessed with something… else?  
No, he wasn’t.  
It was all him, he knew that. He doesn’t know how, but he feels it. He understands what it is to be in the helm, behind the ship of his body.  
A gust of sea air hit him in the face. The saltiness of it all forced him to wipe his eyes, and when he opened them again, he noticed a light blinking on the Ediga. Quickly, he fumbled for his own lantern, and lit a match to prove his presence.  
“Hello.” the opposing light said.  
“Hi. Is this Everest?”  
“Yes.”  
“Hello.”  
“I can’t help but notice all of the funeral…” she paused. “Pyres,” she continued, probably straining to think of the word, “drifting behind you throughout the day. What happened?”  
“A murderer was aboard.”  
“Oh. Has it been absolved?”  
“It has. I just killed his accomplice an hour ago.”  
“Accomplice? Are you sure he had but one?”  
“Can we ever be? If he had more, let’s just hope they were discouraged.”  
Fabian heard a sloshing noise on the other end of the boat. He paid it no mind, he was busy translating, still. He wondered if Everest had memorized morse. He sure hadn’t, but luckily one of the first pages in his leatherbound was a translator that he’d scribbled out himself.  
“That brings many a sailor trauma, does it not?” as time went on, the two became more comfortable expressing whole thoughts instead of the choppy nonsenses of rushed conversation. It took much, much longer to accomplish, but led to real feelings of face to face conversation.  
“I am very upset today, yes. I’ve never had to… do that.”  
“Do what?”  
“Kill somebody.”  
“It was in your own defense. Let it be done.” Fabian found himself wondering what kind of voice Everest had. Did she have a thick Dovish accent? Or was she more accustomed to Rittish speech, as Doves do work with Ritts frequently?”  
“It is in my past. I hope to move on.” Something was making a lot of noise behind him. He didn’t look.  
“I do hope we get to meet upon landing. I appreciate the conversation.”  
“Yes, that would be nice.”  
While Fabian was translating the next wave of blinking lights, he heard what could only be described as water falling out of piles and piles of fabric and hair and body, masked by the heavy loud stomp of steel-footed boots. He finally turned around. The only thing he’d managed to translate was the strange phrase; “I can’t wait for--what is”  
His eyes met hollow holes of once-olive skin burned dry to soaked bone. The figure was covered in partially burnt furs layered over top each other. A strange and vile mixture of burnt, rotten, and sea-bloated flesh bore itself in the few places where the fabrics had burned themselves away, and in the places where they had only turned to ash, the skin was bore of the tendency of water to wash away ash from what it was once connected to. The man--if it ever was a man, it’s not anymore--wielded a heavily rusted Norsrittish broadsword--the runes and designs, those that weren’t filled with sand or bloated with rust, gave away their creator’s home.  
“Ek standennr” it said.  
“Who are you?” he yelled at the figure, though yet he knew, somehow.  
“Þat er tími eingatr ek veginvadersr” it replied.  
Fabian had no weapon with which he could fight the reanimation. He didn’t quite want to… he thought that this revenant creature may be an innocent being torn apart by forces it couldn’t control.  
“Speak to me in tongue that I know you can.”  
It said nothing. It began to limp toward him, wobbling on legs bloated or burnt. Black water fell from it’s clothes every time it moved. Fabian thought only to retrieve his knife. He did not know quite why his voice did not call for assistance. Perhaps something told him he could do it.  
When the creature came within it’s sword’s range, Fabian abused it’s apparent lack of real eyes, and shone his lantern bright for himself to see. It was soaked, so no fire could be wrought upon it’s furs. He watched the sword as he circled around the entity, his knife and offhand in the most defensive stance he could think of--knife once again held backhand instead of forward. He knew that, likely, this creature wouldn’t die of traditional means, and would likely have to be severed in some way. The knife wouldn’t do it without tremendous effort.  
The limping thing raised it’s sword high in the air, it’s weight causing quite the wobble in it’s thinned out arms. Fabian knew that parrying would mean nothing--his bright mind yet had another idea.  
As it moved to slam the broadsword down on Fabian’s head, he quickly side-stepped, and in the thing’s downtime, he stomped his foot on the blade, and another kicked it’s elbow inward. A water-logged shriek pierced his ears, and as the thing fell on it’s rump, it’s arm completely backwards, leaking more black blood, he heard it speaking.   
“Starrinn móðir munu takþinnr menn inn í svartr vargr”  
Fabian picked the sword up with his other hand. The burned flesh still attached to it had expelled yet more black blood onto his gloved hand. He cut the thing’s head off in a wide slashing blow. It exhausted his arm in one swing.  
He was so tired.  
He returned to the lantern where he would communicate with Everest.  
“I am sorry. I have to go.”  
He plunged deep, the sword, into the monster’s heart.  
He took off his bloodied glove and his now-ruined shirt. The vest was fine, and he’d many shirts with which to replace this one.  
He dreamed of writhing waters.

“What happened?” Keres asked the man struggling to keep his eyes open; his mind becoming something of a strained and anxious animal in the early dawn, the clutches of a rocking and cradling sleep having so wistfully left his grasp. He left no reply as he swayed back and forth, shirtless, with one glove on, and bloodied pants. He looked up at the skipper, and back at the rotting pile of flesh upon the deck.  
Keres slapped him. It helped a little to bring his mind back from night.  
“I don’t know, sir.” he mumbled. He really didn’t--it was all a blur to him, the events that occurred the night before.  
“I’m so god-damned ready to turn this boat around and spare all of your bloodied souls of the green hell we sail toward.” Keres began to pace, his rolled-up sleeves carrying his arms that were seemingly left abandoned at his side, his body language describing weariness while his tone spoke anger.  
“I believe that’s… not necessary.”  
“You were attacked by a Leper.” he stopped pacing for a moment just to make impactful eye contact with Fabian, arms still hung low. Fabian’s forearms were still covered in, though now dried, blood. He didn’t, even this morning, recognize that last night was actually not a dream. The line was blurry.  
It was soon to blur further.  
Keres found a mop, and a pitchfork. “You get him off of the deck and back into the water before anyone sees. This didn’t happen, Fabian.”  
“Aye,” he chuckled, “I don’t think it did.”  
He took the fork and, as it pierced the bloated and gangrenous body, let out pus and sea-greened fluids. It caused Keres to vomit over the edge of the deck. Fabian swung the man over the edge of the deck, shaking the tool around to get the body to slide off it’s spears. He, still airy and sleepy, bounced on his tip-toes over to the disembodied head, and, not before doing a dancer’s spin on his heel, kicked the head overboard like a children’s toy ball. The black leather shoe he was wearing looked none-the-blacker after it was pelted with black blood.  
Keres took him by the shoulders. “You blood-starved bastard. Stop it.” They made solid eye contact, and Fabian’s eyes became unwavering, finally.  
Fabian had took a deep breath. “I-...”  
“Wake up.”  
Fabian became silent once more, and shame suddenly washed over his body, torching his mind. He was awake, finally. He began to mop all of the blood and fluid off of the floor, his head hung low, and his face awash with many different kinds of pink and white. His eyes darted around--as if the very surroundings that parsed him held no trust; his mind and his body becoming a distant tether, with an uncomfortable handshake binding the two separate entities of his person as one being. What just happened? Moments before there was no question that the two parts were acting as one. Of course, he didn’t think of this--it simply was.  
Keres, finally satisfied, walked away. “Go to sleep after that. You need it.” The man’s dominance had snapped something into the innocent kid. He steadied his gaze on his work, and his breath, though still fast and warm, began to find a rhythm. The blood didn’t really go away, it just became more and more dilute as it was washed over with salt water--like the observer of the obviously stained floor may have forgotten it was always there, or simply believed they’d never noticed it at all. It turned the sap-browned wood a bit more of a cherry color. It was beautiful, actually… quite a rarity was red-colored wood in Ritan, and the softly pink wood of îleorger was much more lucrative and expensive, because the woods of pink often furnished a source of food, and a winery that chops it’s orchard after each harvest will soon find the wine festering before even another fruit can grace the barrels that now rot.  
The stains left by the blood allowed to blacken stood out like a cicada in the foliage, as to say it didn't at all--the wood it laid upon was already cracked dry and plastered with a soon heat-treated sap drained from trees in wet marshlands. The wood was already darkened, and a bit more blood didn’t add to it’s negativity. Perhaps it would aid it’s stain’s initial purpose of reinforcement. Likely not.  
A clack resounded and once again grounded Fabian’s thoughts to his body. He wanted to throw up, but there wasn’t much purchase with which to dispel in a fit of disgust and a show of passionately being ‘upset,’ when truly, Fabian’s sour feelings weren’t aided by the actions or by the sights, but instead were products entirely of peer-pressure, completely and wholly the human desire to be like his fellow survivors. In short, he was not upset from the bloodshed, but instead what upset him was his lack of initial disgust.   
Was it the desire to blend in, or was it just his instinct? Are they one in the same? Why did he want to express anything at all? Couldn’t he just clean up and go back to bed? His mind was wailing with all kinds of thoughts that hurt his metaphysical hands to touch  
He collapsed on the floor at the final restitution of the teak deck to it’s quickly suffocating salty aura. Left alone, he slowly returned to his airy and, frankly, quite stupid state of sleep-deprivation. He shut and open his eyes, involuntarily to the point of the lids feeling like cast iron cookware heavy enough to pressure-cook and stew by itself--his very eyes could not remain open for mere moments, like they were sticks swaying in the winds at the herculean task of holding up their very own breathing leaves. But still, some God willed that he push his similarly stick-like figure up off of the salt-watered floor, lest he get splintered in his sleep, or perhaps a maiden gander at his barren, extruding-ribbed chest of pale paper and stifle a giggle.   
His legs swung in front of him, step by step until they placed his body before the door. He, compromising with the war that the two states of his eyes were in, kept one eye open with all his might, while his other was left to sea, instead of to see. He almost fell down the stairs to the lower deck, and did in fact bump into somebody.  
“Watch where you’re slamming ‘fore I pull a blade out your damn stomach.”  
“Oh,” he let out a tired chuckle--the kind you let fly when you’re secretly tired of everything, but you’re trying to see if you could humor just one more thing, even though you can’t. “I’m sorry my friend. Remind me,” he coughed. “...who are you? Mister… Rhett?”  
“You will not call me Rhett. That’s not for senseless bastards like yourself to throw around.”  
“I apologize, friend.”  
“Get out of my way.”  
“What serves you up there this early?”  
“How about your damned self, what could possibly be waiting for you up there that requires you to be half nude and one-gloved?”  
“I,” he chuckled and swayed around, “was ordered to clean something up by Keres himself. The pretty boy.”  
“...’Pretty boy.’ I’m starting to think maybe you were catching a glimpse of the moon, instead.”  
“Oh, and you’ve still not told me what you need from up there.” Fabian’s thin body was still quite enough to block the slim staircase from the man passing him. Of course, Fabian couldn’t exit the staircase because Castor was also in the perfect position to block him.  
“Move.”  
“You first.”  
“Move.” he said, getting very close to Fabian’s face.  
“You,” he hiccuped, “first.” His knapsack was not on his person currently, but muscle memory led his hands to attempt to draw a knife from it’s nonexistent outer pocket. This became, to Castor, a battle not of practicality, but of dignity. For Fabian, however, it was still a dream. Something within him thought that the airiness of dreaming never quite left him. He sort-of forgot that he was in a confrontation, and idly pushed his entire body right into Castor’s and felt almost no resistance. Castor walked backwards down the stairs like a shy dog and said nothing more.   
Finally, Fabian fell over, face first, into the small cot. He remained like that as the sun rose, it’s glare playing off the window to illuminate his already pale body to a ghostly quality.   
The day was old when he awoke, and his senses were alarmed by two ghastly reminders. His mouth dry and his stomach hot, he stumbled to the dining hall and slammed whatever money he had come up with. He’d still not dressed himself, mind you.  
“Haven’t ye even a little polite bone in yer whole body?” Anna jarredly asked him. She seemed to mind not that he was rude, but instead considered why he might be rude.  
“I-” Fabian stood up straight, instead of his slouched position he was just in, wherein one could observe the very nerves that tied together his back, pushed up onto the skin, for all to see. “I’m sorry. I am quite hungry, is all.”  
“No matter. Bring the bowl back lest you face me.” she swiped the pieces into her hand, and pushed the bowl forward to the place where Fabian could grab it. She seemed… calmer.  
She watched him in awe as he stumbled over to the table to sit as he took the hot bowl and placed it right up to his mouth, refusing to sip slowly as the nearly scalding fluid burnt his throat and his cheeks as it traveled down his neck, on both inside and out. He gasped for breath as the bowl nearly fell out of his hands and onto the table, spinning on it’s heels.  
“My boy,” she said, “have you realized now that you are thin, and are simply making so that flesh is thickened?”  
“No,” he coughed, wiping his chest and neck with his bare hand. “Just… hungry.”  
“Bring the bowl back.” she claimed. “And get dressed.”  
“I can keep myself to an agenda when my sleep is not disturbed.”  
“I do not even want to know what kept you up to wake now.”  
“I need a bath.” he cleared his throat, sliding a finger along his breast to see the translucent red liquid drip and cover his fingertip.  
“Aye, damn you do.”  
Sailors typically bathed once every couple of days, but Fabian sought it necessary to clean his skin of dried blood and wet soup. Typically, clothes were simply stirred in saltwater to rid of any scents or stains, but this left them everdamp and stinging any fresh wounds. People washed without soap frequently, because sailors believed that the oils on one’s skin were protective, but understood that their bodies become slimy after weeks. Soap dissolved oils, while water only skimmed what was extraneous. Fabian found the closet in which men were to rinse their bodies with temperate water. Not often were things heated--kerosene was reserved for the cooking of food and the lighting of lamps--and, already a sailor’s folly, bathing was no exception.   
Chilled water rushed over the surface of his skin, and the dry blood scraped off his hands, however without ease. His unusually hairless chest was left pink after tumultuous and torrential scrubbing from his fingernails and the brush that sheared off excess skin. Of course, the Sudritt’s idea of cleanliness was much apart from his sailor brethren--he understood quite that the body rots when encased in it’s own shell. Besides, he didn’t much appreciate the way skin appeared when left placid, oft was it more yellowish and slimy, he much preferred clean and smooth skin upon his bosom. Not many took pride in such a thin and lithe, effeminate figure as his, but alas, frequently did he ignore the other precipices that bore their sharp faces through the thin skins of emasculate men. Rather, he took pride in his appearance for it oft made weak-hearted men falter in a bout of self-questioning and, often, bringing about a tumultuous show of self-irreverence. A smile played about his lips when he tied the linen about his waist and lightly tread back to his room to retain decency.  
Not much hobby captured the idle traveller’s thoughts. Sometimes, one would read or write for simply hours. The unintelligent may find serenity in self-afforded scenes of joy scribbled about on paper in quite the obvious “self-taught” appearance, however not more diligent did the student fill his time. It was unparalleled, the sense of abstruse boredom one feels in the dreaming of a new land contrasted harshly with the sense of no land at all. Days typically passed in this manner, and thus they did, when Keres and his shipmates found no new crime upon which they should become the judge, jury, and executioners. Sometimes, Fabian would converse idly with Everest--or, for that matter, the Ediga, whoever there felt the desire to hold the lantern hostage. Frequently, Keres would find time to make certain that Fabian had not begun the descent into madness, though it was with a madness in himself that he did so--a madness unlike any other, as in the fiery and rosy-cheeked insanity that one seldom felt in this life like his. Keres did not, however, find disgust in this. He only felt caution, as to say, he processed his understanding of these events slowly and quietly.  
It was not until the very next Friday dinner that more interesting a turn of events occurred. Still, within Castor’s mind was the rivalry between a dog and his master. He poked at the scar on his stomach tenderly as he sat at the dinner table, prepared only for an oversensory night of quietly eating his soup before leaving and hiding once more in his room. This would not be the case.  
As the men filed in around the table, some idle conversation reigned over every man’s ears. Keres, upon entering last, waited until all men were seated. Once they were, he stepped over to the familiar stage-like group of boxes, and took his stand on one of them. Everyone gazed forth.  
“My shipmates. We began a few, and arrive fewer. As many of you know, we are on course to reach the land of Verdoirêt within two days, may the ever-strange Anemoi permit our travels speedily. I want not the voyage to end in a bitter good-bye. I speak to all of you daily, passingly as they may be, and bonds form quite like the rope that tighten sails West. I wish to say my first of many farewells now, for it is with a heavy heart that I must return to the nation of Ritan to collect more settlers, as is my purpose. I find no solace in this job--however peaceful the salty air may sing to my nostrils a tune of ever-lustrous familiarity, she has been my only constant. With but one man to accompany me on my return to Ritan, my friend Mellark--speak your condolences upon him briefly, but ever so meaningfully--I will think lonely thoughts. I wish all of you luck in the trials to come, as settling a colony has never been an easy task for the men of underbrush like ourselves. Enjoy your meal, my friends, for it is so gracefully supplied by myself and your astounding chef, Ana, who comes to settle upon the forest land with the masses.”  
A cheer resounded the hall between the seven-or-so sailors, and the dinner was commenced. Keres came to sit in the empty seat alongside Fabian, who took no notice, as he was practically buried in his soup. He considered for a long moment, a show of physical affection between him and his saviour, but his countenance of yearning quickly became traitorous to his true intention.  
“Have you any grievances to take with me?” Fabian quickly asked as soon as he set his bowl on the table, clearing his peripherals to the glare of the tan, long-haired man lounging in a relaxed, but anticipatory state, aside him.  
“No.” he spoke confidently. “Only that I did not further take the time to become acquainted.”  
“You have said it yourself, Skipper, that we’ve an unpredictable course of time between now and landfall. Speak to me, for my ears are open, what you wish to converse.”  
“The beauty in that statement is that I know not what I want to converse with you, but only that I know that I wish sincerely to do so.”  
“I may take it upon myself to be flattered if ulterior motives didn’t oft follow such sentiments.”  
“Nay,” he expressed rapid dissonance in his tone, as to revel in what his feelings had been mistaken. “I wish not to disappoint you with a chaser of bitter tonic. I want to…”  
The black-haired man shifted in his seat, to relax his shoulders and his thighs. His rolled-up sleeves began to falter, and the frills of his shirt under his black vest became quickly wrinkled in the motion. “Yes?” he asked after quite a moment of respite from his questioner.  
“Nevermind, my dear sailor.”  
“Aye.” he coughed. “Have you anything needs said?”  
“I’m… not sure.”  
“Alas, neither do I, fair friend of mine. I do hope that our journeys may not separate entirely of tonight,” he blushed, as he quite understood what his Skipper was expressing. “I see upon the countenances of our friends, however, a disgustingly fervent desire only to get the smell of salt out of their garments, for it burns our eyes to the point of seeing everything in an almost red-hot madness.”  
“Funny, I think you ought to mention it like that…”  
“Is there something amiss about the sailor’s folly? Am I mistaken, as do your very eyes not cloud with moisture?”  
“Nay, they gloss not in irritation, but in utter self-defeating manner akin to a blink in the time it takes for one glorious and beautiful moment to occur. I…”  
“Must we continue in this manner all night? I find our motives quite clear.”  
“What?”  
“Oh, nevermind.” His heart rushed in a fit of realized fears. Had he really been playing along with this? Was Keres…?  
“...” A grunt of sorts left the Skipper’s mouth. He looked away from Fabian for the first time in several minutes, off to the rest of the table. Not one other being was quit of a hearty conversation, so it was quite clear that none were the wiser of the two’s strange interaction. Fabian stood, only to stretch his long body, and it caused Keres quite the jump. “Sit! Sit! I beg you!”  
“Calm yourself, friend! I was simply allowing my muscles room to breathe. Besides, it is not like I can invoke Jehovah and simply waltz upon my way to the forest land myself! Hell, maybe it is beneficial we converse somewhere that our thoughts may resound in our heads joined only by the other’s voice.”  
“I think it to be a strange occurrence should the Captain leave in private with a silent crewmate.”  
“I know not a man here who should interfere in the very Captain’s business. Your speech is the law on this wide sea, and your armaments the lawmen.”  
“Fair, that may be. Allow me time to consume something, lest I myself die of the very consumption.”   
“All the time of the night is upon your grasp. Allow me to retire to my territory.”  
“A cramped room is no room for one to think. Please, enter my room in wait, I invite you. You will find comfort and space inside, and are free to peruse my things. I’ve never anything to hide from a sailor.”  
“So be it.”  
“Aye, I will be only a moment.” The two sailors stood, and moved in opposite directions. Keres, to acquire soup, and Fabian, to exit the mess hall. He went to the top deck, and found the once-intimidating top-deck room that belonged to, quote, “Captain Jonathan Keres.” It was not locked, so he entered.  
A genuine cotton bed, silk-sheeted, fit for two people. was bathed in the relaxing deep orange of a nearby oil lamp. Many desks crowded the walls of the bedroom, whether they held sailor’s tools, journals, or travel logs to date back several years. Upon the desk nearest the bed--be it a nightstand--was an opened journal, accompanied by a fancy gold-tipped feather pen with it’s inkwell not far. Among, of course, Fabian’s first thoughts, was the dishonest desire to read of, at least, the final half-complete page in such a diary. However, the Sudritt expressed restraint, and rest himself upon the silken bed, running his thin hands atop the almost painfully smooth sheet. It created an uncomfortable texture upon his hand, but he assumed that the other side of this sheet was the true place of comfort. He wondered if he’d be there some day.  
Briefly, he considered what he’d been holding at bay for the last fifteen minutes. The desire to accompany the skipper, abandoning his dream for the forest land, and becoming a permanent crewmember of the Qué de Nòu, simply to join Keres in loneliness upon the sea, indefinitely. It was a calming thought, and the more he considered it, the deeper it laced it’s tendrils into his mind. It would be so easy, he considered. It would be so delightful, their home on the wide ocean together.  
Was he dreaming of growing so fond of another man? Weren’t these thoughts to be of the greatest taboos? Maybe they were. But was he worried?  
He didn’t know.  
He shook his head roughly. He rolled to the other side of the bed, and immediately began to indulge in what the Skipper seemed to imply what he wanted him to do; “You are free to peruse my things.” he remembers. He idly grasps at the bottom of the binding and, bringing it close to candlelight, began to read. Immediately, he noted the man’s pleasant handwriting.  
“June 22nd. Friday. I awoke at six in the morning. My ship is approximately two days from shore. It is without consoling that I must bid farewell to many of my sailors today, for today is the last of three crew dinners. Some part of me fears I will never see a single one of them evermore. Some part of me insists, of course, that I retire to the forest land with them. I have never felt so strongly about a batch of sailors as this one. Those Norsritts will have a place in my heart forever, and of course the Sudritt saviour, too. Even those that join us from de l’Hommes and the cook who graces us with stoicism from Monteglace. The other Sudrittish man, however, eludes me. He speaks not to me. Not to anybody, bar the passing word from the polite Sudritt, who saved both of our lives. I feel me and the rude one have widely contrasting feelings about our savior.  
“Dinner occurs again, tonight, and I hope to speak more to our Sudrittish hero.”  
Quickly, he flipped the book, face down, upon the bedside table, as he heard the door creak open.  
“Fair night, is it not?” asked the skipper.  
“Aye,”  
“I mind not that you were reading my diary. I mean not to hide anything. I am simply glad that, if need be, our paths will part to never rejoin in the near future. Is that something you desire?”  
Fabian gasped a little at this. “Nay, I bring discord to such a statement. I considered for a time my desire to join you upon your sail.”  
“Oh, so you do return the sentiment? I was beginning to think it was for null and naught.”  
“I… simply wish we had more time to think. Impermanence is a folly.”  
“Aye, I agree heartily, my friend. Is it not enough that we cannot simply read one another’s thoughts, but alas, many times it becomes hard to decipher our own?”  
Fabian looked at the floor and smiled brightly. He could not agree more. He didn’t know what to say. “Skipper, I think…”  
“Hush. Before you betray yourself your own thoughts, simply allow ourselves the time to become acquainted with this discovery among ourselves.”  
It was sooner than he had thought that he might be on the other side of that sheet. He was quite right about his other hypothesis, however.  
The two were blushing incredibly red--one may mistake Fabian himself for a man of more sun if the sockets of his eyes did not forbid such a sheer change of color. Their breaths came fast, but neither of them even considered the idea of contact so soon, God forbid it cross the other’s boundary--though, honestly, it would not have.  
They were content simply being next to one another.  
Sooner did sleep come to Keres, who’d much more time to consider this reality, than did it to Fabian. Though he eventually did gather some balance in his mind to bring rest, he considered for a long time what had just occurred.  
He’d never thought it would be so easy to understand himself. He finally did. He was surprised that it was his ship captain who, for a time, Fabian believed to be too enveloped in all things masculine to even consider such a possibility. He’d thought Keres might have had a wife, or something. Suppose not, he said.  
He dreamt of beaked sea creatures. 

June 23rd, 1610  
The morning of the night of landfall.

He awoke with a start. He, unable to see past the great darkness of the room, palmed the part of the bed to his left. He felt the space where his confidant earlier rested. Still warm, he thought. He scrambled out of the intensely comfortable bed--the most comfortable and sweetly warm place he’d been for two weeks. The chilled, drafty air of the bedroom met his bare arms and his face, long placid, began to cool down, which brought a shiver down his spine. He was still finely clothed, however messy his hair may have been. He picked the remnants of a comfortable sleep out of his eyes, and strode for the door. Outside of the cracked glass window, he saw his Skipper staring out over the deck, arms folded behind his back. The human mind contains mechanisms that foster unignorable trust for any entity that one sleeps alongside--so Fabian wished deeply to understand what sea did Keres worry for. He opened the door.  
“Keres?”  
“Ah, yes, Fabian. It is a red sky this morning.”  
“I do not follow.”  
“Aye, there is an ancient rhyme, I am sure you’ve heard it. In short, we must prepare for a hellstorm.”  
“How can you be so sure?”  
“Do you see how the bellies of the clouds glow yellow?”  
“I do.”  
“This implies, of course, that they are high enough in the sky--and thus moving very quickly--for the sun to shine at such an angle.”  
“And thus…?”  
“And thus a storm approaches very quickly. I ask of you, great engineer--though have I never seen proof of your work--what may improve our chances?”  
Fabian had, for a long time now, considered such a question. Several holes pierced the hull over the passing few nights. The sail weathered with the salty wind. Wood, in some places, was barren of waterproofing sap. He hadn’t noted the construction of the lower decks, but had noticed several… strangely placed beams.  
“We must hurry. Storm approaches quickly, my friend!” Keres snapped him to attention again.   
“Do you have another sailcloth anywhere?”  
“No.”  
“Anything with which to reinforce it?”  
“Just linens.”  
“Get whatever you can on there.” While Fabian was not a shipwright, he had definitely understood what drove sails to rift. “We need to get the bullet holes sealed. And get something over the mast to keep it upright--there will be a lot of stress.”  
“I am not sure, my friend. Typically, during storms, we should take the sail down, not… act as if it will drag us westbound.”  
“You asked me what I would do, well, I want to get to Verdoirêt as soon as possible.” Fabian said as he idly placed reinforcements around the base of the mast, though he realized quickly what this implied. He hadn’t given up on his dream, but he hadn’t quite decided if he should stay with Keres or not.  
“Are you upset?” his confidant asked.  
“N-no… that’s not how I meant to say it.”  
“Fabian, it’s quite alright if you don’t think-”  
“I do think, though. I do think this will…”  
They each stopped what they were doing--Keres had single-mindedly began gathering linens to sew up into the sail to keep it strong enough to pull them with the wind, without it being sliced open by the sharp forces of nature. Fabian had been placing wooded objects at strong angles against the mast. They’d both made prolonged eye contact. Fabian’s cheeks seemed to catch aflame.  
“I want this to work, Keres. I want to see where this goes.”  
“I just worry.”  
“I’m scared out of my bloodydamn mind, believe you me.”  
“Ah-hah. I do believe you. We will see. I’m happy we came to an understanding.”  
“Yeah.”  
They kept staring at each other. In both, a madness seemed to take further place--to take deeper root in their minds. A sort of mutually-inclusive misanthropy grew, and the hot midsummer’s sunny madness called out to them.  
A snap of thunder almost made Fabian trip in surprise. He finished tying the piece of wood that he’d fashioned up to the weak point of the mast, and, taking tight hold of his coat, stumbled almost to the point of falling down the stairs. “Have we any buckets?” he called up to Keres.  
“I will be down momentarily. This will only take but a second to fashion safely onto the sail.”  
“Alright, my friend. Please do be safe.”  
“If all goes to hell, I am taking the sail down.”  
“A fair predisposition.” Fabian called up as he turned around to view the other voyagers, all exiting their rooms at the sound of lightning. Anna was already awake, however she came up from the lower deck to assure herself that this ship was not going unprepared. She met Fabian’s eyes.  
“Hello, then.” she said. “Is Keres up and about?”  
“Aye, he is.”  
“What are we to do? If I’ve ever seen a rough storm, it’s been six in the morning.”  
“We are going to use the extra wind to sail faster West.”  
“Are you bloody sure about that? That sounds like an awful idea.”  
“Keres seemed to think it was alright.”  
Castor was not involved in anyone else’s conversation, so he was available to hear what Fabian had just said. The three Norsritts were talking to one another in their native tongue, and the married couple from de l’Hommes was, of course, having a conversation among themselves. Castor approached Anna and Fabian, bewildered.  
“Are you out of your mind? We’re not just taking the sail down?” Castor interjected.  
“Keres said that if it got hectic, he’d take it down. Don’t worry. Don’t you want to get to Verdoirêt faster?”  
“I can wait a goddamned couple hours, can you not?” the bearded Sudritt continued.  
“No.” said his clean-shaven counterpart.  
Castor sighed heavily. His leaden boots stomped against the floor as he headed for the staircase. Fabian dejectedly shrugged his shoulders, and then looked back to Anna.  
“You’re right, though.” she said quietly. “I cannot stand to sail, my mind begins to stagnate. How am I supposed to emulate the spice of life when life is so… salty?”  
Fabian smirked at this sentiment. He agreed. Some arguing began on the top deck, but it was quickly brought downstairs as Keres had finished sewing cloth into the sail.  
“Anna, please, if you would, gather several buckets. It is only typical storm preparation.”  
“Aye, cap’an”  
“Castor--” that who was still talking to Keres like a brick wall-- “do you mind shutting your dumb mouth while I think?”  
Castor, who was poised martially, dropped his hand from it’s position and muted his voice. An almost audible breath-out occurred.  
“Thank you, bloodied cagebird.” Keres walked to check each room, but yet still listened.  
Castor pinched the bridge of his nose. “Bloody goin’to sink, aren’t we?” the ginger-haired man asked of his… saviour.  
“Don’t you hate me?”  
“Hate is a… strong word, don’t we think?”  
“Fire in the eyes like you’ve once had in yours speaks more than strength.”  
“I’m not a fiery man.”  
“Quite literally, though,” Fabian gestures to the man’s orange hair and beard. “...you are a man made of Hephaestus’ flames.”  
“Shut it.” the man almost dashed forward.  
“Oh, a bit polar, aren’t we?”  
Castor literally yelled at Fabian. “Stop!”   
Keres stopped checking rooms, and began striding toward Castor. “Have we an issue?” He looked at the both of them, although at Fabian with a little more… of some other kind of fire. “Because the last bloody-damn time we had an issue, I solved it. Do you want me to solve it again? I’m rather partial, myself.”  
“Keres,” Castor began. “I apologize. I’m a little…”  
The whole trio was silent for a moment.  
“On edge?” Fabian asked?  
“On edge.” Castor confirmed.  
“We’re all on edge.” Keres started, running a hand through his hair. “I’ve been on edge since, well, Occam. Talk of Fae rubs my nerves wrong. I just… I know it’s lunacy, but… something tells me to worry. Something tells me that, even if Fae are not quite as magical as they are said to be, that perhaps the indigenous men of Verdoirêt may yet prove strength. Who is to say Occam truly wasn’t a native? He sure appeared the like. I have never seen… anything like what Fabian did on the deck…”  
“Keres…!” Fabian jolted.  
“What… did Fabian do on the deck?” Castor asked.  
“The Norsritt…” Keres began. “Do you remember him?”  
“Yes, the bearded man. He wanted medicine.”  
“Yes… Some strange… events, occurred, which led to his… untimely resurrection.”  
“Resurrection.” Castor spoke, baffled.  
“Yes, something of the like. Though it was more… sinister.”  
A bolt of lightning nearby set the men en-garde. Rain, which had been pouring in through the staircase at a rather… uncomfortable pace… only tattered the passionate man’s spirits as he stomped up the stairs. It dampened his clothing rapidly, and cleaned the salt from his eyes. It was refreshing. Fabian and Castor followed him up shortly. The sky seemed twilight once more, purple and green hues dashed around, and quickly the settlers realized. Fast, did they approach, to Verdoirêt, and now alone in their voyage. The twelve men, if they did not decide to slow down now, would have to hold down on a stormy shore for possibly, days--in a most lonely fashion. This thought crossed none of their minds, but of course, it did not really need to.  
“I suppose it will be a half-hour at this course. I can see the barren encampment from here.”  
“Is that all we’ve to work with?” Fabian had taken to using his spyglass. The forest land was a more verdant green than he may have ever seen before, but it’s shore was rocky and foreboding.   
“You men are among a company of ships, remember? I am yet not the only captain for leagues, and you surely are not the only engineer.”  
“I think we may want to take anchor minutes before landfall, sir.” Fabian said. “We do not want to descend alone, I think, and I need time with which to consider our… former question.”  
“Alright, my good sailor. I can only hope that you answer what you consider to be the best for yourself. Do not allow my desires to trip you.”  
“...what are you two talking about?” Castor asked them.  
“It is of none of your concern.” Keres said, without making eye-contact with him.  
“None of my concern?!?” he shouted. “It seems rather important to you lot! Why must I be left astray?”  
“Because it is, truly, and genuinely, none of your concern.” Keres feared one thing; that a rapid mutiny would occur if his orientation had been revealed to his least temperate settler. However, the foolish are often not dealt with so easily, and will strive to achieve information that may only hurt them.   
“Bastard. Tell me.” Castor shook himself in a strange and primordial anger.  
“I will speak nothing more to you.”  
“You will tell me of your heretical secrets or I will cast aside a heap of property!”  
…  
“Speak to me!”  
…  
Castor took Keres by his collar. Fabian scrambled to restrain the other hand--as obstinate tendencies tend to follow such familiar patterns.  
Keres drew his pistol and placed it upon the scarred stomach of Castor.  
“Are you sure about this?” Keres asked, his collar still wrested by the massive man.  
“You’re bluffing.” Castor laughed.  
“Bluffing.”  
“Yeah! You’re bluffing!”  
Quickly, Keres pointed the thing skyward and rang out a warning to the man. It shocked his ears, and he let go of his own steel grip. He covered his ears and, without a word, ran below deck.  
A slimy writhing could be heard.  
“Now that he’s gone, and things seem to be going… alright--the rain is calming, finally--would you like to speak with me in private?”  
“Yes, skipper, I suppose I would.” His cheeks reddened at the notion of once again being alone in a room with the man he’d been… thinking about. Airiness filled his insides, and he became lightheaded.   
He led him inside. The door shut with a resounding thud, and Keres immediately began to shed soaked cloth and replace it with fresher garment. A hardly noticeable line was strung about the ceiling upon which he dried wet clothing frequently. “If you feel uncomfortable, feel free to take off that soak’ed coat of yours.”  
Fabian shed the thing in a much similar fashion, and draped it along the line. It pulled it taut, noticeably, as it was a much larger garment than both of Keres’ that had been placed upon the line.  
“My vest and undershirt are only minimally wettened. I will be fine.”  
“If you insist.” Keres rested upon the bed, now. “Come, speak.”  
“Alright…”  
It was still undone from this morning. An hour or so had since passed, and all warmth had been seeped. They may simply have to create it anew. Surely, neither of them would mind.  
“Have you had time to consider the option?”  
“I think that I may process it as we speak.”  
“What left of it to process?”  
“I cannot decide if a break from the salt is what I need, or to simply get used to it.”  
“I believe, biased as I may be, that one should simply get used to it. Maybe, however, you’d seldom leave the room. What is there to do but eat and sleep, and engage in conversation?”  
“Oft, a conversation is aided by scenery, of which there is none. I am afraid we may get bored.”  
“Boredom has many dances with which to cure it’s mischances, as a literary genius once put it.” This caused Fabian to blush almost to the point of becoming a muted mess. “Ah-ha, do not be afraid. I am no mule.” Fabian pushed away at the man who was now simply being rude, and who was chuckling with a soft timbre that carried it to echo softly. “Bar humor, I do speak truth. I am a patient and understanding man--I do not believe in forceful love. Come on, speak your feelings.”  
“I think….”  
“Yes?”  
“I think we’ll see how it goes. If I can last you one trip round, back to Ritan and again to Verdoirêt, perhaps then I will have surely made up my mind.”  
“Aye! That is a wise decision.”  
The rain calmed to a pitter-patter--a melodic tapping on the roof of the deckhouse that filled the building with an ambient static. The men allowed themselves to return to rest for a moment, but rapidly, Keres ejected himself from the bed and out to the deck. Fabian heard only the cut-off exclamation of the man, “-ck is that?” and rushed out to accompany him, although he sort-of wished that it was simply recurring dreams of writhing waters that enveloped his perception.  
It was not a dream, this time.  
The water writhed. A stiff, cold, and hollow breeze bit at the men’s noses as they perceived… unnatural movements beneath the green foam. Black masses and shiny coils were flowing just like the water. It was imperceptible whether this was a school of strange eel-like fish, or one large… entity.  
A passing stormcloud blotted out the sun, and an ecliptic darkness reigned supreme, with a million minions of bioluminescence in the shape of… a familiar mural of sorts. Tinted green by the sea, it was only minute moments of exposure to the air that informed the men of their everfamiliar pale indigo hue. Both of the men locked in a camaraderie were similarly frozen in fear, however one thing finally managed to grace the lips of the Skipper.  
“My friend,” he began, taking a very subtle hold of Fabian’s hand. “I require you to awaken me.”  
“I do not think that this is a dream, my friend,” he grabbed Keres’ hand tight. “I think we must get to shore immediately.”  
A pillar of black eel’s flesh pierced the sky. The indigo snakes that plastered on it’s skin pulsed, as if they carried it’s very… life-force. “I am going to miss you.” Keres said. “But I imagine we’ll writhe side-by-side in Hell.”  
“Do not give up now, my confidant.” Fabian whispered. “You must get us away from this beast.”  
Keres stood in thought, and eventually his anxiously sweating hand left Fabian’s grasp. They only shared a glance. Keres found himself at the boat’s steering wheel, and began to turn it to wriggle through the sea, hopefully dodging any obstruction.  
Fabian looked at the Ediga’s soft orange lights, now more distant than ever, and wondered if he would ever get to meet his friend. The hollow feeling of dead meat filled his mind, and he stood ever-still.  
They were nearing the shore, as the wind kicked up once again. The storm raged on and carried the rocking boat Westward. Faster, and faster, and it almost knocked Fabian’s shins out from under him several times. He retained balance.  
He was simply staring at the eel-like giant… tentacle, which had been flailing about in the air. It’s indigo pulse grew erratic as it’s bearer noticed the absence of it’s plaything.  
It swam toward like a child traverses a bath--obstructionless, as if the imperceptibly deep water was simply it’s wading grounds. Fabian turned around to observe Verdoirêt.  
It was within swimming distance.  
Luckily.  
A fearsome crash was the last thing to enter the man’s ears before all notable perception qualia disappeared, and he fell to his knees, and then to his chest, unconscious.  
With a hard slap, he awoke once more. Keres had situated his friend on a floating chunk of hull. The beast became uninterested as it had realized how fragile it’s plaything was.  
“I suppose we will not be staying on the Qué de Nòu together, after all.” he managed to huff out from pained inward breaths as he struggled to swim for two. Fabian’s eyes were soaked with tears. He could not see very well, but he noticed that Keres was not the only man swimming. He could see Castor, Anna, and two of three Norsritts. None of the other voyagers were visible.  
He shivered.  
He was starving.   
He could hardly move his body.  
A severe pain spiked his breath every time he tried.  
He passed out again.  
He dreamt of tricksters.

As such ends the Prologue of the story “Black Beasts.” Thank you for reading.

**Author's Note:**

> Remember to contact me if you want the rest!


End file.
